Rare UN session to consider collective action on Russia-Ukraine crisis

NEW YORK: The UN Safety Council on Sunday voted on a draft decision deciding to convene an emergency particular session of the Normal Meeting to advocate collective motion on the scenario in Ukraine, two days after an analogous decision, sponsored by 81 nations, was shot down on the council on Friday by the Russian veto.

Doable motion might embrace the usage of armed power, however this has by no means occurred within the historical past of the UN.

That is the primary time in 40 years {that a} determination to carry an emergency particular session of the 193-member GA has been made, and solely the eleventh time because the UN’s inception.

The draft decision was tabled by the US and Albania, the 2 co-penholders on Ukraine. It’s a so-called “Uniting for Peace” decision, which permits a deadlocked council to refer the scenario in query to the Normal Meeting.

The vote would require a two-thirds majority of UN member states and the affirmative vote of solely 9 safety council members. Such GA resolutions have then traditionally been adopted regardless of a unfavourable vote by a everlasting member.

The decision argues that the dearth of unanimity among the many Safety Council’s everlasting members on the Ukraine disaster has prevented the UN’s most vital physique from exercising its main duty for the upkeep of worldwide peace and safety.

A complete of 11 council members voted in favor, with China, UAE and India abstaining. Russia vetoed it.

Sunday’s vote occurred amid a large-scale assault by Russian navy forces on main cities in Ukraine, together with the capital Kyiv, with a whole lot of deaths and accidents reported.

This morning there have been stories that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to carry direct talks on the border of Belarus.

The UAE’s deputy everlasting consultant to the UN, Mohamed Abushahab, welcomed such an announcement, and reiterated his name for a cessation of hostilities and for dialogue as the one approach ahead.

Abushahab pressured that the safety of civilians in Ukraine ought to stay a high precedence.

“Civilians attempting to achieve security should be capable of depart unhindered,” he mentioned, including that it was of paramount significance for support to achieve these in want.

In her rationalization of the vote, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield mentioned that council members who assist the decision acknowledge that that is “no abnormal second,” one which requires “extraordinary actions to satisfy this risk to our worldwide system and do every little thing we are able to to assist Ukraine and its folks.”

Thomas-Greenfield instructed fellow ambassadors: “These of us right here, safely sitting on this hallowed corridor, have an ethical duty to reply to Russia’s desecration of human life.”

She mentioned that the response consists of each humanitarian support for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in want and navy assist, and “holding the only real aggressor, Russia, accountable for its actions.” She vowed to “not let atrocities slide.”

Thomas-Greenfield referred to as on council members to be impressed by Ukrainians’ braveness and to search for Ukrainian folks’s resilience “within the face of Russian weapons and troopers and bombs and rockets.”

She additionally welcomed the Ukrainians’ “braveness to sit down down and discuss (and) their continued willingness to take part in peace talks.”

Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia instructed the council that Western makes an attempt to ignore his nation’s safety considerations concerning NATO’s growth are towards the UN Constitution.

He mentioned the present disaster broke out not on account of the launch of navy operations in Ukraine however eight years in the past when “you turned a blind eye to Ukrainian nationalists’” actions within the Japanese Donbas area.

“Russia doesn’t shell civilians or civilian infrastructure. The risk to civilians is posed by Ukrainian nationalists,” Nebenzia added, accusing so-called “nationalists” of following the identical ways as Daesh, utilizing civilians as human shields, and releasing criminals from jail and offering them with weapons.

Ukraine’s UN Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya mentioned it was extraordinarily alarming that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has resorted in the present day to open nuclear blackmail,” and urged the world to take Putin’s risk “very significantly.”

Kyslytsya mentioned that Russians to this point had misplaced 4,300 personnel with greater than 200 taken as prisoners of battle.

He added his authorities has created a hotline — “Come Again Alive from Ukraine” — for relations of Russian troopers who will not be conscious of their whereabouts. He accused Russia of not admitting these losses.

India’s Everlasting Consultant T. S. Tirumurti reiterated his name for an instantaneous cessation of violence. “There isn’t a different selection however to return to dialogue,” he mentioned as he referred to as for respecting territorial integrity of “all states.”

China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun mentioned that the highest precedence now could be for “all events to train restraint to forestall the scenario from getting worse.”

Zhang welcomed the announcement of doable talks between Russia and Ukraine on the Belarus border, and in addition expressed China’s assist for “equal-footed dialogue between the EU and Russia.”

Monday’s session is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. in New York (1500 GMT) and is anticipated to final no less than all day.

On Monday, the Safety Council is scheduled to carry at 5 p.m. an emergency assembly on the humanitarian scenario in Ukraine.

It was requested by French President Emmanuel Macron and can characteristic officers from the UN’s humanitarian affairs and refugee companies, in response to diplomats.